Perhaps I'm a bit sensitive, newly invested in the series and all...
But how the hell does anyone think a Doctor Who movie would ever be a good idea? I don't even mind that aborted thing that was the Eighth Doctor's one and only screen outing, but still. Not. A. Good. Idea.
This part worried me especially:
"Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch," he said.
Translation: If they can make shit up and get viewers, so can we! Also, you should be worried when people say they're going to put aside that which they admit is fantastic. (Just saying.)
I just don't believe Doctor Who works as a movie. For starters, the show's running gags (new people goggling at the interior of the TARDIS for the first time, say) couldn't be pulled off with quite the same level of fun. The show (old and new) often struggles to stretch out a given episode's mysteries to fill forty-five minutes. How the hell would you draft a Who-plot that can go upwards of two hours?
More than that, who the hell wants to see a Doctor unconnected to his previous lives? Part of the meta-fun of Doctor Who, for me, is the sense that like its fictional hero, the series has been around, in one guise or another, for longer than I've been alive. You tend to jump in midstream or get hooked at certain easily accessible time points (at the beginning of a new Doctor; with the start of new-Who, etc.). And that fun continues with knowing that the show will go, building on what you've seen before. New-Who does this and it's a lot of fun when they do. Individual episodes are fun, but they're almost incalculably more so if you know a little of what's come before. (There was a Baker-ized voice thing and a bit about jelly babies in an episode from the last season of new-Who, and I giggled like a mad person. My sister, not knowing anything of classic-Who, didn't get the joke.) No one wants to start again. Bad as the Eighth Doctor's movie was, I prefer he not be excised because he appeared in something inconveniently awful.
What surprises me most is that, given the track record of Who movies, anyone thought this might be a good idea, no matter who's involved...
This part worried me especially:
"Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch," he said.
Translation: If they can make shit up and get viewers, so can we! Also, you should be worried when people say they're going to put aside that which they admit is fantastic. (Just saying.)
I just don't believe Doctor Who works as a movie. For starters, the show's running gags (new people goggling at the interior of the TARDIS for the first time, say) couldn't be pulled off with quite the same level of fun. The show (old and new) often struggles to stretch out a given episode's mysteries to fill forty-five minutes. How the hell would you draft a Who-plot that can go upwards of two hours?
More than that, who the hell wants to see a Doctor unconnected to his previous lives? Part of the meta-fun of Doctor Who, for me, is the sense that like its fictional hero, the series has been around, in one guise or another, for longer than I've been alive. You tend to jump in midstream or get hooked at certain easily accessible time points (at the beginning of a new Doctor; with the start of new-Who, etc.). And that fun continues with knowing that the show will go, building on what you've seen before. New-Who does this and it's a lot of fun when they do. Individual episodes are fun, but they're almost incalculably more so if you know a little of what's come before. (There was a Baker-ized voice thing and a bit about jelly babies in an episode from the last season of new-Who, and I giggled like a mad person. My sister, not knowing anything of classic-Who, didn't get the joke.) No one wants to start again. Bad as the Eighth Doctor's movie was, I prefer he not be excised because he appeared in something inconveniently awful.
What surprises me most is that, given the track record of Who movies, anyone thought this might be a good idea, no matter who's involved...